In our last post Configuring vCloud Director we have seen the initial configuration of vCloud director. Also we have created one Provider VDC and prepared the Esxi hosts for setting up the vCloud infrastructure.

In this post we will learn how to create networking components in vCloud Director. In my post Understanding vCloud Networking i tried to touch down on theoretical concepts of vCloud Networking. Now we will try our hands out on configuring the different network components in this post.

1: Creating External Network

The External Network is used for inter-Cloud connections. Its “your connection to the outside world” and by outside world I didn’t meant internet access. It’s anything that is taking your traffic out of your cloud. It may be connected to internet but not necessarily.

For creating External Network you should have a port-group created on vDS in advance. I have created a port-group by name “vCloud_Ext_NW” on my vDS and it is connected to a 10.10.10.x/24 network.

Now login to vCloud Director web console and go to home tab and click on “Create an External Network”

In Next page to follow select your vCenter Server and the dvPort-Group which will be used for External Network Access and hit Next.

On Next Page you have to configure the network which you selected for External access. You have to define the IP Address range which will be utilized for external access along with Gateway,DNS IP and the DNS suffix etc. Click on the Add button to start configuring the External Network settings.

Hit OK once you are done. On the Next page give the name for this external network and the description and hit Next.

On Ready To Complete Page review your settings and hit finish.

Creating Network Pools

The Next thing is to configure the network pools in vCloud director. Network pools are consumed by the organizations and it may require each organization use different pool depending upon your design.

Login to vCloud Director Web Interface and go to “Manage & Monitor” Tab and Select Network Pools. You will find one VXLAN pool already created there. It was created during creating the vCloud director cell and has the same name as of your vCloud cell.

We will create a new pool here. There are 3 types of pool supported in vCloud director:

1: VLAN Backed

2: vSphere Port-Group Backed

3: vCloud Network Isolation Backed (vCDNI)

Duncan Epping has written an excellent article VCD Networking for explaining Network Pools in great depth. I am not covering theoretical background here. Lets jump into lab and start configuring the pools.

In my home lab I created a vSphere Port-Group Backed Network Pool. Before creating a pool you should have made all the port-groups that will be added to this pool in advance on your  vDS. I have already created a port group by name “vCloud_VM_NW” which I will add in this Network Pool.

Under Network Pools click the + button to add a new pool.

In Network Pool Type select “vSphere port group backed”

Hit Next and on next page select your vCenter Server.

Hit Next. in the Next screen select the port groups that will be added to this pool and click on the –> Add button to add those port group.

Hit Next. On next screen select a name for this Network Pool.

On Ready to Complete page review your settings and hit finish.

you can observe a new pool created under Network Pools now.

In the next post we will learn how to create organization and org vDC.